1. Field of Invention
The present invention generally relates to information broadcast in a television broadcast system and specifically to methods that use a moving information band further referred to as a ticker to deliver interactive information.
2. Prior Art
Television broadcast systems broadcast television signals. These signals can be either digital or analog. In either case, television content that is broadcast usually occupies the full television screen. But in certain cases such as news broadcasts, a scrolling band of information is added to the television signal and is visible at the bottom of a screen. This scrolling band of information is further referred to as a ticker, or a ticker band.
The ticker usually consists of information that is applicable to a wide audience. Since most television receivers can only receive information, the information contained in a ticker is lost after it has been displayed for a few seconds or until it is repeated.
There have been several prior art attempts at capturing information from this ticker. Most prior systems prescribe using an optical character recognition system to extract information out of a ticker. But such systems are not reliable as television signals can be unreliable as the medium of broadcast can suffer from signal errors. Over the air broadcast systems in particular suffer from interference, fading and other signal problems, and hence cannot guarantee reception of reliable ticker information all the time. Hence relying on optical character recognition to extract information from ticker is not reliable. Signal error problems are applicable to both analog and digital television signals. Over the air digital transmission may be resilient to errors and such errors may be acceptable for moving picture content, but for information such as text, errors will translate to erroneous character data.
Interactive ticker system offers a capability for a user to interact with information present in the ticker. This could include stock market prices, product sale information or coupons. Such information may be selectively stored and recalled for later use by a user.
But since a television receiver is usually not a programmable device, there is no way to get access to this ticker information in a conventional television. But newer generation television receivers are equipped with general purpose application processors that can run software programs inside a television. There are also set top boxes that have such processing capabilities. But all these programmable devices of prior art offer capturing information from a ticker using optical character recognition. This as said before is not a reliable means to get information that can be recalled for later use.
There are also systems that embed hidden information in television signals using blanking intervals, but such systems cannot be used by users of existing television sets that cannot process this hidden data. Such systems also mandate expensive upgrades to content distribution systems.
Hence there is a need for a system that enables capture of information from an information ticker in a television broadcast that is reliable under all circumstances including when watching television in a room using cable television input or using over the air broadcasts, and is available to all users with or without interactive capabilities, and without mandating expensive hardware and infrastructure upgrades to content distributors.
If such a system exists then it could be used for interactive commerce opportunities enabling a lot of small businesses to advertise their products while providing interaction to consumers at a fraction of advertising costs as compared with current advertisement methods in a television.
It is the subject of present invention to describe an interactive ticker system that enables reliable information storage and retrieval from a ticker band in television signal, and an electronic commerce system that leverages the reliable interactive ticker system without the need for expensive system upgrades at content distributors end.
Such a system is not known to exist in prior art.
Following paragraphs in current section describe relevant prior art in this field.
Prior art US Doc 20030167467 describes an interactive ticker system in which a television viewer is provided with video content along with interactive ticker information. But this method uses a separate ticker data retrieval channel and corresponding decoders or tuners to get and process such information. This method mandates a secondary interface in addition to a basic television tuner to get to interactive ticker information. The information in this ticker system can only be seen by users who have access to additional tuner or data retrieval system prescribed by this method and not by users who have conventional television sets. This method does not address capturing of ticker data from a single television signal but mandates a separate channel that is decoded separately. Hence this method cannot be used with conventional analog television broadcasts. Supporting a parallel channel of ticker data mandates expensive upgrades to infrastructure at content distributors end.
Prior art U.S. Pat. No. 6,426,778 describes a system where interactive information related to a video is transmitted in parallel to the main content stream. But this does not address the need to capture information from a ticker that is embedded inside a regular television signal.
As can be seen from above, all known prior arts suffer from some limitations in offering a solution to capture and store information from a ticker embedded in a television signal.